The present invention relates to a structural material or element and, more particularly, to a material/element with improved construction properties.
Technical Section
This invention relates to structural/constructional element, which is applicable especially as a constructional, underlying, dampening, shock-absorbing and insulating material for diverse floor systems—its use is universal and its application is intended for following flooring systems: parquet, wooden, laminate-floating, vinyl, linoleum, casting epoxy, PUR+ other multi-layer polymer combinations, PVC flooring, sports flooring and self-leveling, multifunctional, industrial floors.
The solution relates also to the light panel according to CZ PV 2017-45, which shows a unique functional properties and is resistant to mechanical pressure or impact or shock.
Note: Throughout the specification, reference is made to measurements in the metric system, using S.I. units of measure. For general reference throughout the specification, when a reference is made to the unit of measurements “mm,” the reference is to millimeters. A centimeter contains 10 millimeters and a meter contains 100 centimeters. One meter corresponds to 3.28 feet.
Current State of the Technique/Actual Technological Level
At present time in overwhelming majority of cases by the construction of a floor, as a primary structural/constructional element—there is used a wooden grate. There are more functions of a wooden grate within a traditional flooring systems—primarily it's the basic building/constructional base and underlying material, partially dampening+absorbing shocks—which causes partial cushion, mainly the wooden grate holds the whole flooring. The wooden construction is laid in linear/parallel way or perpendicular crossing structure, to the top are fixed OSB/hardboard panels and top floor layer/s in dependence on chosen flooring system. This is especially used for construction of sporting floors, factories, schools, exhibition areas etc. It is the most common and the world's widespread method of constructing and manufacturing floor surfaces.
This classic method has a whole range of disadvantages, which are caused due to the choice of the underlying material—the wood. These main disadvantages and weaknesses are: the whole flooring system based on the wooden grate has ordinarily an average height of 100 to 150 mm, whereby the majority of the space takes the wooden grate as itself. This creates unwanted space pockets which must be afterwards filled and sealed by mineral wool or other form of heat or noise isolation. Alternatively there is installed a ventilation system, placed under the floor in these pockets (needed an air circulation due to the wooden grate)=expensive installation and operation costs! If used on sports hall, e.g. volleyball, basketball etc., the noise insulation is necessary for eliminating unwanted noise effects (shocks from balls and impacts from players), echoes . . . etc. Next negative effect is associated reduction in clear height of the room (resp. reducing the height of the ceiling)—decreases the volume of usable space for living and/or increases the height of the building (e.g. in the case of a 20-storey building, the difference of 80 mm/each floor will case in total the difference in the whole building height of 1.60 meter!), next big weakness of wood is all above its dimensional instability—swelling, expansion and changes in shape+volume related to variable humidity. With this are associated “sound effects” as creaking, the system must be ventilated very often, wood is not flexible material on itself.
Biodegradable processes (rots, molds, micro-organisms)+highly sensitive material to humidity, which represents a big problem with transportation (water condensation, rain, evaporating . . . etc.), wood worms, dry rots, pests—susceptibility especially during transport (psychopathological and veterinary limitations/restrictions/dry rot/wood-worm/microbes etc., next big disadvantage is combustibility—high susceptibility to fire. This all leads to huge need of prevention in the form of a chemical treatments—protective coating for impregnation, protection against pests and microorganisms, fire protective coatings or surface finish (big consumption of emulsions, stains, lacquers, varnishes . . . etc.).
Wood a itself doesn't cause any desired effect of “dampening”, which has to be achieved through structural design (grid structure) or by combination of wood with other materials (rubber dampening pads etc.), with this is associated high consumption of valuable natural resource—additionally only selected species of wood are usable for these purposes and the lifespan of used wood is limiting the lifespan of the floor.
With the progressive technical development within the lighting elements and technologies, we can observe for several decades a significant expansion of their use, whereby the lighting source is already not fulfilling only its primary and basic function, i.e. increase of luminosity in dark environment (change of value of the units: “lumen” and/or “lux”, e.g. outdoor surroundings during the night and/or dark places/rooms within the interior), but has found its use in the segment of promotion, advertising, design, navigation and safety elements, culture, arts or entertainment industry, etc. In particular, with the arrival of LED technology—whose main advantage lies in a very favorable size of the light source (small dimensions), but simultaneously shows a high level of performance and intensive lighting effect, all with relatively low power consumption and long life-time of the lighting source—there was recorded significant increase in demand, consumption and use of lighting source as a design-creating element with new the function of so-called mood lighting (sometimes called also “atmosphere-light”), which is characterized especially by optional change of optical properties and light effects, like regulation of light intensity coming from LED-light source, variable color spectrum (adjustable color tones), including other associated features—for example, adjustable control unit/software, which changes light intensity and color tones, depending on actual acoustic situation in the room and reacts on currently playing music, rhythm and style. With the arrival of LED technology there is certainly to see a big extension of options for the use of light sources in the form of new LED light fixtures, lamps, panels, chandeliers, LED Strip, ropes or the navigation and signaling devices.
Anyway, the LED-light discovery as big improvement doesn't mean anything else than the change/extension of options within the optical lighting-function/luminance, when the LEDs have just replaced the previous less efficient light-sources like bulbs, fluorescent tubes, halogen lamps. Etc. All this light-media, however, have one common limiting denominator—a very low mechanical resistance, since they are the easily breakable and fragile.
Typical structure of the current LED lighting panel consists in particular of the base plate and support frame (metal, plastic), under which are placed the lightning LED-diodes (possibly right into the frame after the circuit), in-between there usually placed different kinds of interlayer films (reflective, color-changing, UV protective, diffusion, filters) and the most-upper visible layer is created from of a light-permeable (translucent) composite or glass plate with relatively small thickness (2-5 mm), with various diameters—typical size from 300×300 mm to 600×600. As a typical material for this application, there are used following polymers: “Acryl-Glass” which means poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), styrene-acrylonitrile copolymer (SAN) or polycarbonate (PC).
From the previous argumentation it's evident, that in the case of sudden action of mechanical forces—impact, shock or pressure, the most-upper light cover panel will be easily broken and the whole construction including the light media suffers an irreversible mechanical destruction, what is certainly a unwanted effect and very limiting factor in terms of possible applications and practical use.